till we drop
by irnan
Summary: Jim plus whiskey plus late night crazy person conversations equals Insidious Attack of the Horrendous Migraine on Dr. McCoy.


_This is a disclaimer._

**till we drop**

It takes a long time for Jim to admit out loud what he's known in his gut all along, and of course when he does it, he does it drunk: shitfaced, in fact, because it's been gnawing at him for a while, and he's running out of ways to keep it hidden inside him, and tomorrow is -

Well, tomorrow is tomorrow.

He and Bones are sprawled out over the floor of Jim's quarters, trading a half-empty bottle of whiskey back and forth between them because they started out too tired to fetch actual glasses and are now too drunk to do so, and the words spill out like they've been waiting there, behind his teeth, for over a year.

"Making me Captain of the Enterprise was the dumbest, most illogical thing Command ever did."

"Don't talk logic at me, Jim," Bones slurs. "You know how I feel about people talking logic to me." His accent is so thick that Jim would probably have trouble with it if he hadn't known Leonard McCoy for as long as he has.

But he doesn't have trouble with it, because he has known Leonard McCoy for that long, and he doesn't have trouble sitting up and taking the bottle off the man either. Nice long swig. Old, familiar burn in his throat made more potent by the fact that Jim hasn't had a single drop of alcohol in nearly six months.

He promised Bones he'd cut back, and Jim Kirk never does things half way.

"You know what I mean," he says.

"No, I don't," Bones retorts, rather testily. Obviously, there's something on Jim's ceiling the man find unbearably fascinating and far more interesting than Jim, so Jim stretches out beside him and looks up as well, because nothing in the universe, known or not, is allowed to be more interesting than he is.

"I'm a drop-out," he says.

Beside him, Bones freezes up, a little, and then sighs. Once. Says nothing. Jim realises the doctor is waiting for him to continue, and is suddenly overtaken by the irrational but unshakeable certainty that Bones has been waiting for this conversation for a very long time.

"I'm a drop-out," he says again. "I spent the first twenty-two years of my life being a loser, a brawler and a farm hand slash amateur mechanic in the wilds of Iowa. I drank too much and I smoked a ridiculous amount of illegal substances and I was the least reliable person - brother, son, boyfriend - in the entire state. Hell, on the entire continent!"

He breaks off here, to take another swig out of that gorgeous bottle of heavenly booze that's making him far too chatty and decidedly sick.

"And then they give me a starship? What the fuck, Bones?! OK, so they were desperate. Half the fleet was destroyed and the Romulans were eyeing us askance and who knows what the Klingons were thinking. OK, so it was for PR purposes. I'm _extraordinarily _pretty, after all."

Even at times like these, he can't help the remark. Bones dignifies it with a snort and a raised eyebrow, but he doesn't look at Jim once and that makes it easier.

"The point is," Jim says, and draws a harsh breath. "We should all be dead a hundred times over, Bones. A hundred times. I'm not - I came into this with an attitude and a sexy slouch, and nothing else. _Nothing else_, you hear me?"

Finally, Bones deigns to speak without turning his head. "And yet, we're not," he says. "What does that tell you about your command skills?"

"_They're not mine_, dammit!" Jim explodes. "They're not mine. You gettin' this? I've been playing by ear and gut instinct and the memories of a man who doesn't and will never exist, and none of it is real!"

He's on his feet, he realises. On his feet and yelling.

Bones props himself up on his elbows and meets Jim's eyes from where he's still flat on the floor, the bastard, how does he make that look so comfortable?

"I assume you're talking about that crazy story with the time loop and the alternate future that Nero was from and the freaky-ass telepathic conversation you had with another version of your First Officer that actually manages to like you about how you were this great and wonderful leader in his world and everything was sunshine and puppies and hot girls in miniskirts hitting on you all the time?" he says, and maybe Jim shouldn't have told him about that, because hearing it repeated back to him like this makes him sound a little insane.

He nods once.

"Bullshit," Bones says airily. "Bring me back the booze, you selfish fucker."

Jim laughs out loud. Puts the booze down by Bone's feet. Starts edging towards the door.

He's always been good at running away from ugly truths.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, it is. I'll never be - _him_."

This time, something in his voice makes Bones sit up. "Jim," he says, soft and low. "Jim, stop. Don't you run away from me or I'll lock you in here for another week and watch you go crazy from boredom. I'm your CMO, I have the code for it."

Jim pauses, back against the door.

"You think of asking that pointy-eared bastard to take it back?"

"And then what?" Jim says to the whiskey bottle. "Go back to being nothing, like I was before?"

"You came to the Academy."

Jim laughs again. "Pike dared me. Real good reason."

"You did a four-year training course in three, and gradutated top of the class."

"The only reason I didn't get kicked out was because of my grades."

"You saved Earth," Bones says. "You saved us by ingenuity and genius and spit-in-the-face-of-death bravery, and your inexistant other self didn't teach you those things."

Jim graduates back to the floor beside him, because a) his head is spinning and b) that's where the booze is.

"Some days it feels like he's taking over my head," he says abruptly.

He thinks Bones shurgs, but he's not sure, because he can't actually look at the man.

"He's kinda your mentor. That's what mentors do. Take over your head and smash your brain into shards and give you the tools you need to rebuild it the way you want it."

"That," Jim says, "was seriously deep."

"That was seriously drunk," Bones says. "Besides, I don't even know if the 'he' who's taking over your brain is the other Spock or the other you?"

Jim glances at him. Takes another drink. And then another. Then he sets the bottle down, and stretches out next to the first man he ever called 'friend' and meant it, and says quietly, "Neither do I. Hell, I'm not sure if they do."

"I hate the way you talk about them as if they were alive," Bones says.

Jim snorts.

"Does this kinda thing happen every time the evening before you go see your mother?"

"I don't know," Jim says. "We haven't spoken since I enlisted."

Bones pats his hand. "Don't worry about it," he says. "Joanna's coming to meet me. She loves you to death, and if anyone can charm your mother, it'll be her."

Jim laughs again, more peacefully now, and lets himself relax, a little.


End file.
